From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1998 09:04:51 -0400
From: Russ Cox rsc@plan9.bell-labs.com
Subject: [9fans] allowing space (ASCII 0x20) in file names
Topicbox-Message-UUID: 75590588-eac8-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025
Message-ID: <19980414130451.Sr7zgGDdbosmk0t0kmcroPM7-HlEfgrj9saBg5Dp7A8@z>

> One thing I don't get is why "Fields that contain names are 28-byte
> strings (including a terminal NUL (zero) byte)". Why send the zero,
> if it's always zero and it's always there? Why not use these 28 bytes
> as a sort of persistant fid?

If you don't send the zero, how do you indicate filenames less
than 27 bytes?  How would "x.c" get transmitted?  I suppose you
could increase the name length by one by adding the hack that
there's an implicit zero on byte 29 that isn't transmitted,
but it's an ugly hack for a questionable cause (one byte?) and
it would make things like strlen, etc. annoying.